I hit 10,000 words on my current WIP this morning!
It felt good. It felt really good, like I’ve finally poured enough into this story to dare speak about it to the world. I have a long way to go, but the momentum is there, and as I said in regard to my current Bible reading habit, the key is to just keep going. As usual, my characters are running a little wild at the edges of my (simplistic) outline, but I’ve been able to keep them within bounds. Mostly. The fun part of that, of course, is enjoying the spark of finding out exactly how certain things happen in the story as I write, even though I have a general idea of where these people end up.
Anyway, this seemed as good of an occasion as any to share a little about how I stay organized in writing and in life. I’ve always enjoyed “paper planning” as opposed to doing things digitally, and my recent project of curbing my smartphone addiction has only cemented this tendency.
After trying some different planner styles (big Happy Planner, A5 binder, etc), I realized that I find the humble bullet journal to be perfect for my needs. I put a little effort into the “spread” above, but 95% of the pages in my bullet journal are bare bones. Often I have given up on planners where I’ve felt pressured to decorate, add a ton of detail, plan far ahead, etc. So far, I haven’t felt that stress about this planner at all. I do basically the “original” method of bullet journalling, and once in a while, I make a page pretty. But only when I feel like it. 🙂
For my writing-specific stuff, I’ve been getting a little fancier, as it’s something I can just work away at once in a while and not have to commit to on a daily or weekly basis. I got an inexpensive traveler’s notebook, and my perfectionist tendencies to Not Wreck The Perfect Notebook have been mostly ameliorated by the fact that I can always buy new inserts!
The notebook I have includes 3 “inserts”, so far I’ve started on two of them. First, I have a little book for writing craft. It’s been very helpful for me to be able to jot down useful tidbits from books, blog posts, and Youtube videos!
I use the second notebook for a writing tracker – just a very basic record of what I do each session and each day. In glittery gel pen, obviously.
I am not sure what I want to do for my last notebook yet. So far for this-story-specific stuff I’ve been sticking to Google Docs, because it’s so much easier to back things up and to keep random ideas super organized. It’s always a work in progress, right?
Like reading a Bible, homeschooling a hyper almost 6 year old, or reading the Odyssey (another thing I’m trying to do right now. I may do a post on classical education stuff another time!), every story is written a little bit at a time. May God help me to be diligent, even when I don’t feel like it.
